Saturday, February 10, 2007

Striving for Equity in Indiana HS Basketball Schedules

The Times in Northwest Indiana recently reported on ongoing efforts to equalize game times for girls and boys basketball. In 1998, one high school conference proposed to designate Tuesdays and Saturdays for girls games and Fridays for boys games, and then the next week to swap days. Girls had been playing only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the boys had been playing on Fridays and Saturdays. "The idea was to give girls an opportunity to play on Fridays -- in a premier time slot -- and to ensure that the girls and boys had an equal number of school days on the court." The proposal was adopted by many conferences, but the article points out that because not every conference in the state has adopted this scheduling paradigm, it is difficult for schools to stick to it when scheduling non conference games.

In a sidebar, the paper illustrates for all of the schools in its readership the ratio of weeknight games to weekend games for boys and girls. Readers can compare, for example, Boone Grove, where girls play 12 weekday games and 4 weekend games and boys play 4 weekday games and 12 weekend games, to Highland where the girls and boys play almost the same number of weekday and weeknight games.

The sidebar shows that progress has been made on this issue, but there is still room for more.